246 



OLD WEST SURREY 



For the benefit of those who liked a little mild wager- 

 ing there was sometimes a wooden disk, painted black and 

 with white figures, nailed up to the underside of a joist 



within the range of the firelight. 

 It had an iron pointer like a 

 clock-hand, that revolved easily 

 upon its centre. Three men would 

 try their luck, spinning the pointer 

 with a hand or stick. The one 

 who made ' the best of three spins ' 

 would drink free at his friends' 

 expense, or according to any rule 

 that was agreed on. It is only 

 of late years that this play has 

 been stopped, as an undesirable form of gambling, and the 

 disks taken down. 



On the Public-House 

 Ceiling 



Some of the old public-house signs, as well as the 

 shop signs, must have been fine things from a decorative 

 point of view. They were not only 

 painted boards, but also of sculptured 

 wood. The bunch of grapes, two feet 

 ten inches high, I remember all my 

 young life hanging outside the Red Lion 

 Inn at Mil ford. 



It is of eighteenth-century work, and 

 was gilt all over. There must have been 

 a large number of clever carvers of this 

 bold kind of work some hundred and 

 fifty years ago, when the sterns and other 

 portions of ships were highly decorated, 

 and some kind of sign swung above the 

 door of every shop. The shoulders of the bunch had evi- 

 dently perished from exposure to the weather ; they were no 



At the Red Lion 



